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Great Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus arundinaceus). Recorded May 1997 near Illmitz, Neusiedlersee - Seewinkel (Format MP3-FHG; 357 kB). Description: In the foreground five alarm calls. In the background, behind the Great Reed Warbler, you can also hear the songs of the Reed Bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus), Saviâ€™s Warbler (Locustella luscinioides) and the overpowering call of the European Fire-bellied Toad (Bombina bombina).

Thrush Nightingale (Luscinia luscinia). Recorded 17 May 2006 near Moosbrunn, South of Vienna (Format MP3- FHG; 2,1 MB). The song is easy to distinguish from the Nightingale`s song by slower sections, louder, deeper black-bird-like notes, louder chortles. A <hid> sound leads in to louder, faster <treot> sounds, ending with a falling, whirring <doo> sound. There is no cresendo.

MRI has a large collection of bird sounds from many parts of Europe, as well as Indonesia, Brazil. If you have any questions or special requests for particular species, simply send us an email.

Sound recording in the field

In this section, we discuss the recording of bird sounds and what to do with the sounds when you have them

The mystery bird sound - how a machine fooled us all

On 2 Sept 05 at 11am, Mr Kautz (Tullnerbach, Lower Austria) recorded the sound of a warbler from the Illmitzer carpark (Neusidlersee). Part of the (translated) bird.at forum entry follows:
â€œâ€¦from a tree and vineyard, we heard a bird that was unknown to me. It sounded like a tsivit or tsioowoot and was repeated five or six times in a row â€“ then a pause and calling again. A Willow Warbler with a foreign dialect, maybe? I am stumped. Unfortunately, we could not see the bird. After about 30 minutes, a Phylloscopus warbler-sized bird flew from the tree, further back in to the vineyard and continued to sing. I was most probably not a Starling. I made a (poor quality) recording of the call in MP3 format (about 170 KB)â€

I have not manipulated the following MP3 track.

Phylloscopus sp? No, not really. It is actually an artificial noise generator to chase away starlings. Recorded 2 Sept 2005 on the South shore of the Zicklacke, Illmitz, NP Neusiedlersee â€“ Seewinkel (MP3 format, 176 KB).

A section of a spectrogram of the last three (of six) calls.

Thank you for all replies and comments. As the birder could himself verify shortly afterwards, the source of the comic source of the call is actually a man-made alarm system to chase away starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), the foe of the hard-working viticulturalists of the area. There are some, however, who are of the opinion that the alarm acts as an attractor sounds, calling the starlings to the tastiest and sweetest grapes.